reissues

Inside a Warriors Soundtrack Reissue Sure to Please Its Most Cultish Fans

Watching the 1979 film The Warriors now, one can’t help but ponder how much easier city-spanning, comic-book-ready gang warfare might have been in 2016. Chased by rivals? Merely hop into an Uber and escape in air-conditioned comfort. While you’re at it, write it all off as a necessary “business expense.” Easy peasy.

If you do happen to be nostalgic for the burnt-out, hellscape of 1970s New York, slap on the double-LP, remastered Warriors soundtrack, out this week from New Orleans–based Waxwork Records. Formed in 2013, the small, two-person company specializes in re-releasing rare, out-of-print movie soundtracks, mostly from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Three years in the making, the handsome, hefty Warriors package is filled with all of the requisite dog whistles to make the (exquisitely attuned) ears of any self-respecting audiophile immediately perk up: colored, 180-gram vinyl (in a “silver subway car swirl”), original artwork by Marvel Comics illustrator Dave Rapoza, and—in the deluxe version, for a mere $125—two 100 percent embroidered Warriors back patches. Wear these in public and you will most surely end up on Instagram—whether you want to or not.

Past Waxwork releases include 1976’s Taxi Driver (the last score by the great Bernard Herrmann of Psycho and Birds fame), the 1984 kitschy horror classic C.H.U.D., and, for the kiddies, 2015’s Danny Elfman’sGoosebumps. Up next: the unreleased, rejected score to The Exorcist by composer Lalo Schifrin—the perfect musical accompaniment to any romantic date. That is, if you want your date running, screaming from the bedroom.

The Warriors, once again rampaging through the streets, albeit through your turntable, all to a thumping, bumping, woozy, post-disco, pre-trance late-70s accompaniment.